I had an epiphany while I was searching through clumps of grass for my headphones. Mowing several hours in the heat had taken its toll on me. My mind was feeling fuzzy from heat and now I was aggravated that my headphones had fallen out of the cup holder of the lawn tractor as I mowed. Whatever, I thought, I could just buy another pair. I stood up and started to brush the grass from my hands. Then I really felt the grass. Clean, smooth and all over, unique. I was taken with the grass between my fingers. I opened up my sense to the other things around me. Without the rattle of the mower fighting against the volume of my music cranked all the way up as I mowed, I was utterly taken with nature around me. I had been immersed in the first world lifestyle. Headphones, mowing lawns, wishing work would be over, what was for dinner. Now I was enjoying the very base of our existence: nature. Like a lightbulb, it hit me. We are far too disconnected with our world.

I was suddenly ashamed. It had taken me this long to have this sort of epiphany. As a kid, I spent a lot of time in the woods. At some point, an undetermined moment in my life, I had started taking it for granted. I guess I started moving too fast, got caught up in the hurry of day-to-day Americana.

I'm dating a self proclaimed tree hugger. And my epiphany brought back something she said to me as we overlooked Little Rocky Glen near Factoryville, Pennsylvania. We stood on the bluff overlooking Little Rocky, a waterfall that had cut little caverns into the rock face and something you have to see to really appreciate. "See, people nod and say how great it is to protect the environment but they don't really understand it. I think more people would actually get it if they stood here and saw this." She swept an arm across the scene, with its clear waters and white stone. I was taken too but not quite like I was right now, standing in a freshly cut field.

Materialism, I was thinking while I stood there. The wind picked up across the field and pushed clumps of grass around. It blew the blades from my hands. The things we hold have taken our visions away from us. So many of us have been blinded by a screen that we don't look up. How many times have we seen such great sights such as Yosemite National Park or The Grand Canyon or other natural beauties through the lens of a camera. I mean this both figuratively and literally. Our memories of places, and our first thought at these locations, is to take our phones and take pictures. Pictures are great to capture memories but those memories are skewed by the rush. Take the picture, yep I was here, post to Instagram, repeat.

Back at Little Rocky Glenn, we sat on a streamside rock that overlooked a sluggish pool of water down from the waterfall. We watched the budding flowers from trees overhead that would float through the air and land gently on the reflective body of water. The pool was covered in the little white flowers. She rested her head on my shoulder and looked out on the water. "People miss these things in the rush-around. They just need to slow down and take in the world around them."

I took it at face value and didn't really get it myself until I was standing in the windswept field. We have lost our vision to the digital menace, to life in the fast lane, to the grey suited ants marching in step to the corporate beat. Take it all back. Look up from the phone screen. Look at sights with your own eyes, not the camera on your phone. Feel the grass between your fingers and toes. Watch the sun rise and set. Don't let nature be in the rearview mirror as your cruise through the highway of life.